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buddies for the bobs?

Joined
Jan 23, 2008
Messages
21
hi everyone! i was thinking of looking for tankmates for the bobs. does anyone have any suggestions? i was thinking about seahorses. i LOVE seahorses. would the bobs bother them? would they bother the bobs? the tank just looks so bare during the day. i'm afraid that any fish might pick at my bobs, a couple of them are pretty tiny. what do you guys think. :roflmao: my son loves these little smilies!
 
daddysquoc;110719 said:
How big is the tank? how many bobs?

2m tall, 50 cm diameter ~1500L Tank contained 6 horses about 20 cm long and 4 bobs (due to the small diameter in the tank). We don't hold them in this tank anymore due to the difficulty in cleaning it without injuring the bobs.......it's too tall. We hold Bobs now in a either our rock pool tank or in the nursery tank.

Cheers

J
 
Jean;110666 said:
Should be fine. We've held Bobs in with our Potbellies (H. abdominalis, a giant species) with no real problems (not recommended with octopus tho! :grin:)

J

OMG! you've kept bobs (kept or keep?) i have soooooo many questions!
how do you deal with the shrimp heads?
what can i use as a clean up crew?
what kind of light can i use to view them at night with out disturbing them? (i tried a red light but they don't like it, they ink when ever i turn it on)
what do you feed yours? we use ghost opae, but i would like to offer them a range of foods.
do they need a range or are they ok with just one type of food.
what can i offer them for stimulation/enrichment? :talker: pause as i take a deep breath.
 
littlemarley;111431 said:
OMG! you've kept bobs (kept or keep?) i have soooooo many questions!
how do you deal with the shrimp heads?
what can i use as a clean up crew?
what kind of light can i use to view them at night with out disturbing them? (i tried a red light but they don't like it, they ink when ever i turn it on)
what do you feed yours? we use ghost opae, but i would like to offer them a range of foods.
do they need a range or are they ok with just one type of food.
what can i offer them for stimulation/enrichment? :talker: pause as i take a deep breath.

At the moment it's kept, FYI I work at a public aquarium so we have access to stuff the home aquarist doesn't usually! We keep Sepioloidea pacifica. We siphon the tank every other day (but it's a flow through system, so constantly has clean water). We keep small hermits (large in some tanks none in octopus tanks!!!). We've never had a problem with red light but perhaps you could start with a red torch at the other side of the room and approach quietly and slowly, once used to this then try the tank lights.

We feed ours a mix of zooplankton (caught off our wharf) mysids (from a local brackish creek) and amphipods from the local mudflats. We don't offer enrichment other than live prey and there are rocks/pebbles, seaweed and a sandbed in the tank.

Hope this helps!

J
 
i thought of hermits a while ago, but was sorried that they might hurt my bobs, but you did it w/o incident? i've been looking for a star fish, maybe a cushion star, i really like them. i worry that they might get bored. i don't really know what they do in the wild. (when ever we catch them , they're just swimming) and i want to make sure that they have stuff to do. we chased a few into holes. when we scooped the sand where the hole was they were'nt there. i thought they dig far down, like the ohiki. but they don't try to dig at all in the tank. they just cover up with sand and sit there with their eyes sticking out. is that about it? do i need more sand? i have about 4 inches of sand. should i put more in?
also, do they grieve over dead tank mates? i've heard of this with cuttles. have you noticed anything? it seems that they don't eat for the days following.
 
littlemarley;111497 said:
i thought of hermits a while ago, but was sorried that they might hurt my bobs, but you did it w/o incident? i've been looking for a star fish, maybe a cushion star, i really like them. i worry that they might get bored. i don't really know what they do in the wild. (when ever we catch them , they're just swimming) and i want to make sure that they have stuff to do. we chased a few into holes. when we scooped the sand where the hole was they were'nt there. i thought they dig far down, like the ohiki. but they don't try to dig at all in the tank. they just cover up with sand and sit there with their eyes sticking out. is that about it? do i need more sand? i have about 4 inches of sand. should i put more in?
also, do they grieve over dead tank mates? i've heard of this with cuttles. have you noticed anything? it seems that they don't eat for the days following.


small hermits should be fine, as should a small cushion type star. I suspect all they do in the wild is hunt, eat and rest! Ours don't dig deep just cover up as you say with the eyes protruding so that is quite normal behaviour. 4 inches of sand should be fine we rarely have deeper in this tank. I doubt they grieve, some S. pacifica being held for research ate their tank mates! They may not be hungry, there may be a water quality issue if the deceased tank mate is not removed quickly or they may be eating but you're not able to reliably count the prey items and so can't measure it. Also they are much more likely to eat after dark,when all disturbance is gone.

J
 
clyde:);111649 said:
what are bobs?

Small cephs (called Bobtail squid) related to cuttlefish but they have no cuttlebone and are generally more rounded in the body (sometimes called Dumpling squid because of this). In the order Sepiolida and have two families Idiosepidae and Sepiolidae. They're found in shallow(ish) coastal waters of the Pacific and Indian Oceans.

Here's a not very good pic of Sepioloidea pacifica from NZ.
 

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clyde:);111649 said:
what are bobs?

bobtail squids. i call them bobs and we have named all of ours after famous bobs. we have mr.marley, little marley, the builder, dylan, sideshow, spounge, hope, and barker. (the guy from the price is right):lol: we caught them a little over a month ago.
 
jean, can i ask one more quick question, and then i promise i'll stop! what kind of life span did you experience? i've heard a couple of months is all i have to look foward to, is this true? can they lay eggs in captivity? omg, can they be raised from eggs in captivity? how big are the eggs? how big are the babies? we went tide pooling again last weekend and found 3 or 4 that were about the size of a grain of rice. how can you tell males from females? can you tell? do you have to take them apart to tell, 'cause i definately don't want to take them apart, but it would be cool to know who's a bob and who's a bobette. iv'e heard lot about them being used in labs, what for? do they get tested on, like testing products on live animals type testing, or is it for research about the animal? they don't hurt them, do they? wait, maybe i don't want to know if they get hurt, or what they do to them. maybe it's just better to think that some guy in a white coat is sitting in front of a tank watching what they do. wow, i guess that's a little bit more than 1 question, huh? sorry!:oops:
 
Hey Little Marley....no worries about the questions at least they're sensible not like the ones I've just fielded ("Do I REALLY have to go on field trips at the weekend?" My answer "that's what mandatory means! Welcome to the real world students!"). So to your questions:

(Oh and I should have said ours are in a different order they're Sepiida family Sepiadariidae, but they are very similar)

absolute max was 86 days in a research tank a bit longer in the aquarium. We've had them lay eggs in the aquarium (see my photo album for a bad picture of some) They're about 3-4 mm in diameter and the babies not much bigger when they hatch. I've not tried to rear them, haven't had the time. But I don't see why you couldn't try, you'd need a good supply of small live amphipods or similar though (they may well munch on each other). I've never been able to separate the genders, mind you I haven't tried very hard either!


They are used in labs to study cephs as they are relatively easy to get and don't seem to be prone to butt burn etc probably because they don't swim much! We won't discuss hurting them although most labs have an ethics approval procedure to go through to prevent such nasty stuff (I know we do!!!), but sacrifices are sometimes made but the animals would be euthanised in a humane manner and often you can get by with using natural mortalities.

Cheers

Jean
 

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